Tom Lehrer's Entire Catalogue, Free For The Download!

This is a July post – meaning it has little immediate relevance to Zen or hermit practice – but Tom has made it clear on his website that this incredibly generous gesture is temporary, so I need to get word out to other fans well ahead of then.

Tom Lehrer was the patron saint of my college years, thanks to a chemistry prof who brought The Elements into class on a cassette tape and played it for us as a study aide. (I aced the class. Thanks to Tom? You decide.) I subsequently asked for the album for Christmas, and my sainted mother got it for me.

Infection achieved.

I've since continued to discover and enjoy Tom's work, even though his musical career ended while I was in primary school.

In real life, Thomas Andrew Lehrer was an accomplished academic with an amazingly broad résumé, encompassing teaching positions in mathematics, music, and political science, at a long roster of Ivy League colleges. A secret life of virtue that remained generally occult to the legions who savoured his storied public career as a composer and performer of jangly, razor-sharp music hall satire.

(And if that's not impressive enough, he also claims to be the inventor of the Jello shot, which claim has not yet been debunked. A fact I share in Tom's patented voice, in tribute to his questionable influence on me.)

Anyway, 'way back in 2007, Tom shifted every one of his songs into the public domain, declaring that anyone can perform or record any of them free of any financial obligation to creator or corporate sponsor.

What's more, we are also encouraged to download any of his own recordings, among which there are many enduring classics, also free of charge.

And now he's actually made them available on his website, often in multiple versions, for anyone so disposed.

All 95 of them.

And all of his albums may also be streamed or downloaded there in their entirety.

This amazing act of magnanimity (or insolence, take your pick) is time-sensitive, as the author, who is 96 at this writing, warns that the page may be taken down at any time. So hurry on in.

For those who have lived in tragic ignorance of this seminal œuvre, may I suggest the following appetisers:

The Elements (where my own life took its dire turn)

Oedipus Rex

The Vatican Rag

We Will All Go Together When We Go

And if you don't like those, there are 91 more waiting for you, right here.

Nine bows to a man who has made this existence slightly but significantly more tolerable.


(Photo of Professor Lehrer corrupting Danish youth for once courtesy of Jan Persson and Wikimedia Commons.)